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Our Times Square Billboards: Fur is for Neanderthals

October 17, 2013 | Fur

Friends of Animals’ Shocking Times Square Billboards: Fur Is For Neanderthals

New York—“Fur Is A Thing Of The Past” is the message of animal advocacy organization Friends of Animals’ new stunning billboards in Times Square and in the heart of the Broadway Theater District, which will be viewed by 2 million people every day for several weeks starting Oct. 21, and accompanying viral video and print ads in several publications. The bold, far-reaching campaign urges consumers to evolve beyond the Neanderthal mentality that the bloody fur industry is selling.

“New York City is the fashion capital of the world, and our bold billboards, video and print campaign strikes at the heart of attempts to portray fur as glamorous. We want fur to go extinct in the fashion industry—and the cavewoman draped in fur, chomping on an animal leg will be in the heart of Times Square and in the Theater District, looming above millions of shoppers, tourists and New Yorkers,” says Edita Birnkrant, NY Director of Friends of Animals.

Over the past decade U.S. fur sales have declined—in 2003 sales totaled $1.80 billion, in 2012 sales totaled $1.27 billion. In February 2013, VauteCouture made history as the first all vegan label to show at New York Fashion Week, with its first full ready-to-wear collection complete with fur-free winter coats. US News & World Report said of the show, “No one missed the leather or the fur.” And in September 2013, the home of high fashion and glamour, West Hollywood, banned the sale of fur apparel in retail stores, becoming the first city in the United States to do so. "We have pledged to be a place that is free of cruelty to animals and we can no longer support the barbaric fur trade by selling the products of that cruelty in our city,” said West Hollywood Councilman John D’Amico before he introduced the ordinance that led to the ban.

Unfortunately, for some vanity at its worse persists and it’s stronger than their desire to evolve. Here in the United States, more people buy fur in New York than any other city, followed by Chicago. Global fur sales actually increased in 2012, driven by growth in Asian markets and increased designer use. Chinese consumers bought more than half of the fur coats sold worldwide in 2010, and China’s retail sales of fur-related goods – ranging from full-length mink coats to ermine-covered toilet paper holders – were forecast to hit $6 billion in 2012, according to data from the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce. Mink remains the most popular fur representing approximately 70 percent of fur sold at retail. Broadtail, the pelt of a premature or newborn Karakul lamb having a flat and wavy appearance, fox and beaver, popular for trims, are showing growth.

Trish Donnally, fashion editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, has reported that 60 minks are skinned to make one knee-length coat. If that’s not appalling enough, minks suffer neck breaking, or are stuffed into boxes pumped full of unfiltered engine exhaust, then skinned, and lynxes, foxes and chinchillas are often electrocuted. Millions of dogs and cats in China are bludgeoned, strangled with wire nooses and literally bled to death, just so their fur can be turned into trim and trinkets. Frequently, products made from their fur are deliberately mislabeled as other species’ fur and exported to the United States to be sold to unsuspecting consumers in retail stores.

Friends of Animals’ appeal to Americans urges New Yorkers and all shoppers to kill such archaic fur trends. Luxurious alternatives to fur are readily available—there’s no way to justify slaughtering more than 50 million animals raised on fur farms around the world who are killed for their pelts annually in addition to the approximately 10 million animals trapped in the wild. (This number does not include rabbits.)

The “Fur Is A Thing Of The Past’ billboards are located at 241 West 42nd St. between 7th and 8th Ave., in the heart of the Times Square E-Walk, looming above a Dallas BBQ restaurant, the BB King Jazz Club, the Regal movie theater and the other theatres, shops and attractions in the area, and at Broadway & 50th, the heart of the Broadway theater district on the east side of Broadway by the Winter Garden Theater.

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Friends of Animals, an international animal protection organization founded in 1957, advocates for the rights of animals to live free, on their own terms.

Comments

Brilliant billboard. Well done guys and girls for producing this. Keep fighting the good fight. Fur is so yester-year. When will the fur industry and its contingent of ill-informed "celebrities" endorsing fur wake up and realize this?

The billboards are great. Congratulations to Friends of Animals. The suffering on fur farms is hideous. Every woman who wears a fur coat should be forced to watch all the animals killed that go into the making of that one coat for this vain, shallow, unthinking, insensitive excuse for a human being.